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Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Ask just about any Democrat what’s wrong with the party and odds are good you’ll hear their politicians are unwilling to “fight Trump.” Moreover, they are, as one California congressman put it last week, eternally prone to “bringing a butter knife to a gunfight.” This typically isn’t an accusation of personal cowardice but rather an assertion that Democrats have too little discipline and too many inconvenient principles, which make them easy prey for Trump and other Republicans with no scruples at all.

The latest bout of Democratic self-flagellation over this alleged lack of combativeness has erupted in response to Trump’s successful effort to push an unnecessary mid-decade redistricting of U.S. House seats in Texas in order to improve the GOP’s bad odds of maintaining control of the House in 2026. California governor Gavin Newsom has suggested a countermove in his own state that might neutralize the Texas gambit. But that’s complicated because California, unlike Texas, has a constitutionally imposed nonpartisan citizens’ commission system for redistricting that would have to be contemptuously pushed aside to give that power back to Democratic politicians. Is that a good idea politically? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s legitimately debatable since (a) it may fail in the courts or at the ballot box and (b) it just plain looks bad to the millions of Californians who, rightly or wrongly, love nonpartisan setups.

To hear many Democrats nationally, though, any reluctance to do exactly what Republicans are doing is weak and stupid. Here’s three-time electoral loser from Texas Beto O’Rourke at an event in Washington:

“Not only do I think he [Newsom] should do this, I don’t think he should wait for Texas,” said O’Rourke, who is considering running for a Texas Senate seat in 2026. “Why the fuck are we responding and reacting to the other side instead of taking offense on these things?”

“Democrats care more about being right than being in power,” he added. “We have to change that. We have to be ruthlessly focused on winning power.”

Similarly, in an interview with The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Murphy fretted that “the regime operates outside the box and the opposition stays inside the box … Democracies die when the opposition doesn’t realize the rules have changed.” So: fight, fight, fight!

The problem with all this pugilism is that it’s entirely possible in America to fight like hell and lose. We have a winner-takes-all system that gives total executive-branch power to whoever wins even the closest of presidential elections. If that president’s party also controls both congressional chambers, it has legislative instruments (including reconciliation and rescissions) that completely shut the minority party out of power. And if the majority party is as power hungry and norms defying as Trump’s, then the only real obstacle to a potential slide toward authoritarianism is the creaky apparatus of the federal courts, now led by a U.S. Supreme Court that Trump largely shaped and has been extremely accommodating to his wishes.

Given these circumstances, Democrats have done about all the “fighting” they can. Democratic lawyers, advocacy groups, and state attorneys general have relentlessly attacked Trump’s power grabs wherever a venue is available. Not a single Democrat in either the House or Senate voted for a single step toward passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the budget megabill that contains most of Trump’s legislative agenda for 2025. Contrast that with the 12 Senate Democrats and 28 House Democrats who voted for George W. Bush’s equivalent of the OBBB, his 2001 tax cuts. Or, going back further, an incredible 63 House Democrats and 37 Senate Democrats (including Joe Biden!) who voted for Ronald Reagan’s first budget-cut package, which was actually more controversial than the OBBB in its day. Have Democrats accepted their defeats by Trump quietly? Tell that to Cory Booker and Hakeem Jeffries, who each gave record-length speeches exposing the bill’s cruelties and its reverse–Robin Hood economics.

The one actual cave by Democrats so far this year was the decision of nine Senate Democrats (led by Chuck Schumer) against forcing a government shutdown in March when a stopgap spending bill they might have filibustered reached the do-or-die stage. It was a tough call given the executive powers available to the rapacious administration during a government shutdown, with the main strategic error probably being Schumer’s big talk before reversing himself and backing down. It’s true you should never toss your knife away after brandishing it. Democrats will likely face the same excruciating dilemma when the stopgap spending bill expires at the end of September.

Does the Democratic rank and file understand how little power the party’s members of Congress hold and how impossible it is for them to “stop Trump” or beat him given the system we have and the total grip the president has over the GOP? That’s unclear. What is clear: Democrats will finally have a chance to break Trump’s control of Washington in the 2026 midterms by flipping the House, destroying the GOP trifecta, and making another OBBB impossible. So maybe there is a good argument for tossing all principles and caution to the wind in the re-redistricting battle. If Republicans maintain their grip on the U.S. House next year, Democrats could go into a power outage of truly historic proportions.

Democrats Haven’t Failed to ‘Fight’ Trump. They’ve Failed to Win.

Democrats Haven’t Failed to ‘Fight’ Trump. They’ve Failed to Win.